ON 21 June 2002 the Left Front Government in West Bengal celebrated a record 25 years in office at a stretch. This occasion has also inspired a steady stream of articles and commentaries, assessing the achievements and failures of this government in such diverse areas as civil rights and political democracy, education and health services, industry and infrastructure, and of course, agriculture, in this monograph we have preferred to zoom in on the last-named, and decidedly the single most important area.

Have the much-celebrated land reforms heralded a relatively egalitarian rural order? Which class forces have harvested the biggest benefits from Operation Barga and Panchayati Raj? What was the real extent of productivity growth in agriculture over the last 25 years? And what are the implications of the ‘improved’ Left Front’s “new agriculture policy” the Chief Minister is desperately trying to push through? How do changes in agrarian relations in this state compare with all-India trends? How does the ruling CPI(M) cope with questions of class struggle in rural Bengal?

Arindam Sen, member of Central Committee, CPI(ML) and Liberation editorial board, discusses these and other questions in some detail, and that is followed by a brief resume of our movemental intervention in the agrarian scene of West Bengal in recent years.

– Central Committee, CPI(ML) Liberation


References:

Basu, Dipankar (2001): Political Economy of ‘Middleness’ Behind Violence in Rural Wast Bengal, EPW, April 21.

Bose, Biman (2000): Expose TC-BJP campaign of slander and violence – unleasb Mass struggles. People’s Democracy, September 24.

Bhaumik, Shankar Kumar (1994): Tenancy Relations and Agrarian Development – A study of West Bengal.

Ghatak, Maitreesh and Ghatak, Maitreya (2002): Recent Reforms in the Panchayati System in West Bengal toward Greater Participatory Governance? EPW January 5.

Ghosh, Ratan (1981): Agrarian Programme of the Left Front Government, EPW, June (Review of Agriculture).

Government of West Bengal (1995): The Recommendations of The. State Finance Commission, 1990-95.

Khasnabis, Ratan (1994): Tenurial Conditions in West Bengal : Continuity and Change, EPW, December 31.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the Nineteenth Century, Collected Works, Moscow 1973, vol. 15. Marx, Karl: Capital, Vol. Ill, chapter 20.

Ray Ranjan (2000): Poverty, Household Size and Child Welfare in India, EPW, September 23.

Theisenhusen, William C. (2001): Poverty Amidst Plenty, in Horacio R Morales, Jr., James Putzel et al (eds): Power-In The Village.